Data centres are sexy again.

Once an afterthought in a broom cupboard at the end of the corridor or, worse still, a collection of servers under people’s desks, data centres have come a long way.

Today, many government agencies own, share or rent purpose-built operations that promise security, integrity and very, very high availability. Their spending on those facilities is so significant that the Federal Government hired Sir Peter Gershon to, in part, consider best practice in their operation.

The Housing Direct Call Centre

Libby Atkins is just a little bit afraid of storms.

“Storms are a dirty word around here,” she says. “We had the biggest storm in 50 years and that was an interesting experience.”

“Here” for Atkins is Housing Direct, a new contact centre the West Australian Department of Housing has established as a single point of contact for all public housing tenants.

“We are the landlord for approximately 39,000 properties,” Atkins explains. “Most of our work is managing responsive maintenance requests. We take reports on maintenance issues at properties, and arrange contractors to address those issues.”

There was a time when managing a network of PCs involved buying a fleet of computers for the lowest price possible, loading them up with a bunch of software and hoping that they worked for a few years before embarking on another round of purchasing in a few years time.

The Gershon Report targeted the cost of operating data centres. David Braue explains who will need to change their practises and how some agencies are already moving towards more efficient operations